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This week Kate Molleson explores the life and work of a musical giant: drummer and composer Max Roach – in the company of writer and broadcaster Kevin LeGendre. They’ll be focusing on Roach as a percussionist and performer, prioritising his own compositions but also appreciating the art of improvisation as a kind of spontaneous composition.

Max Roach was born in North Carolina in 1924 and grew up in Brooklyn. He was at the vanguard of bebop, alongside Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. They transformed jazz in the mid-20th century and Max Roach never stopped transforming the music, himself and his society. He was a force of political activism in the 1960s, using music as a powerful platform through the civil rights movement. He kept innovating in academia in the 70s and all the way to the early years of the 21st century. A long and innovative musical life.

Today Kate Molleson and Kevin LeGendre explore Max Roach’s early life and the period of his first performances and first recordings. In the 1940s, when he was a fixture of the best bebop groups in New York.

Music featured:
Dr Free-Zee (from Max Roach +4)
Joy Spring (from Clifford Brown and Max Roach)
Bu Dee Daht (from Coleman Hawkins: Rainbow Mist)
Woody’n You (from Coleman Hawkins: Rainbow Mist)
St Louis Blues (from Don Byas: Savoy Jam Party)
Salt Peanuts (from Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker: Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945)
Ko-Ko (from Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Master Takes)
Bird Gets the Worm (from Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy and Dial Master Takes)
Coppin’ the Bop (from JJ Johnson: The Savoy Sessions)
Move (from Miles Davis: The Complete Birth of the Cool)